Esat Digifone's new billing system seems to have at last caught up with calls, but all is still not well. Following long delays, bills are now being received more or less on time, but an ongoing problem whereby a customer may be sent four copies of each bill seems to have been modified rather than cured.

Up until last month, four copies of the Margin's Digifone bill always arrived together, three of the copies being (thankfully) full of zeros. Finally, this month, only a single copy of the bill arrived, not only eliminating the waste associated with posting multiple copies, but also saving paper by printing call details on both sides of the sheet.

But not for long: within a week a second copy followed, this time without the paper-saving measures and containing the same real figures rather than the zeros of before. Still it could be worse: last month Digifone had to apologise for an AIB error which resulted in customers' accounts being debited twice for the same payment of their bills. While the money was soon credited again, at least being billed twice is better than paying twice.